Journey to Excellence

This was another great week! It seems our studies (and the beautiful weather) have been getting us out-and-about the last couple of weeks. This week we went on a field trip and a hike, and called it all "school". Dawson ~ 8th Grade Dawson and I began reading The Swiss Family Robinson and skipped ahead in our A World of Adventure Curriculum to the Age of Exploration . This was totally selfish on my part because I have never read The Swiss Family Robinson and since we are running out of time I was fearful we wouldn't get to it. In fact, we are only doing 17 days of the Age of Exploration, to read the book and do all of the lessons surrounding it, and then will be finishing our year going back to The Renaissance. Since this Age is mostly about just reading about adventure, I have Dawson doing LOTS of vocabulary words from the chapters. I like the "flashcard method", so have him writing the words on one side and the definitions on the other for easy self-qu...

We had a great week this week! I think we have finally hit our stride. Pretty good considering we are three quarters of the way through our school year, huh? We have tweaked and changed and come up with a schedule that works pretty good. I think we are all happy with it! Our schedule is working great for us. And it's not at all how I set out to do school when we started this journey. It's amazing how much I have changed in this process so far. Dawson ~ 8th Grade Things were seeming a little stale in Dawson's studies of The Middle Ages , so I made sure he had some other activities to do this week. He drew a Cartoon castle . He made garlic chive cream cheese spread and dill veggie dip, using fresh herbs . We studied the Black Plague , and I wanted to demonstrate it to him. I found a simulated game, but tweaked it a bit. I drew a map including five cities our character traveled in Adam of the Road . I then took 50 lima beans and put them in a lunch sack. On 15 ...

We took off 9 days because of the biggest snowfall in Oklahoma history (35" outside our doors). So this week, we were back at it in a major way! We also had two field trips, so to say this week was a calm one would be a total lie! In fact, it was exhausting! But, we got tons done and learned a lot! So, we're all happy (although I had to go to bed at 8:00 last night because I was wiped out!) Here's what all we accomplished .... Dawson ~ 8th Grade We are getting right into The Middle Ages in our A World of Adventure curriculum. We are really concentrating on note taking . Up to this point I would read Dawson the information and then he would take notes. Then I would attempt to prepare a study guide from his notes so that he could take quizzes. It became increasingly difficult for me to read his notes. And he told me that he couldn't make sense of them when he went back to review them. Now I am reading him the information and writing the notes on the white board ...

We only got in one day of school before the record-breaking snows hit Oklahoma. Our rule is that if there is no public school, we don't have school either (because we have two public school children.) There was a slight exception, however. Next week Dawson and Rick are going to Tahoe to go snowboarding and Dawson will miss four days of school. He had to make that up. So, on Monday we did four days worth of Bible, Language Arts and Pre-Algebra. It was a long day! And even though we had a "snow day" on Tuesday, we still had four days worth of Social Studies and Science to accomplish, and an essay to write. My student was reluctant, but put in the time to get it done. Now we only have one more day to make up, and we'll do that on our next day of school. Our A World of Adventure curriculum has us starting a new unit, The Middle Ages and Plant Science . As a reminder, with this curriculum all of our Bible, Language Arts and Literature will be related to these two to...

After a much-needed two weeks off for Christmas break, we jumped right into our first week of 2nd semester. Attitudes were good and a lot was accomplished! I was so glad to be back to a routine. Brynne ~ 1st Grade I decided to have a little more structure to Brynne's curriculum for the rest of the year, since it looks like homeschooling her isn't a phase and will more than likely be a permanent thing. The 3 R's are going great! She is just reading like a maniac, doing so awesome! In addition to work pages I have added some more hands-on math (as part of our Bird study) which she really seems to be enjoying! Writing is where I am putting in the most new emphasis. I want her to be writing every day! We even started dictation, which she took to easily. Reading her daily Tanglewood School Curriculum Really Reading page Egg shape matching Addition and subtraction problem egg matching Filling egg cartons with noodles counting by 2's, 5's and 10...